Reykjavík Grapevine - feb. 2022, Blaðsíða 19

19The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02— 2022
Event Picks
Beyond a doubt, Bríet is the
hardest working singer in
Icelandic show biz. She broke into the
music scene like a wrecking ball about
two years ago, claiming the pop throne
and becoming Reykjavík Grapevine’s
Artist of the year in 2020.

Now, Bríet has released a new song,
Cold Feet. It’s actually a three-year-old
composition and, as she told Icelandic
music site, Albumm.is, she had planned
on releasing it sooner, but it was too
tied to her broken heart. The song is
only half of it because the video has
received a lot of attention in Icelandic
media. It shows Bríet in a glass box in
the middle of the Icelandic wilderness,
as it slowly fills up with water. That’s
one way to deal with a broken heart,
we guess. VG
On to jazz wunderkind, Laufey Lin,
who has been gaining huge inter-
national attention, culminating in a
performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
in January. Laufey released her album,
Typical of Me, in 2021 and rose to fame
on TikTok. Laufey has also played for
us at The Reykjavík Grapevine, and you
can find her on our YouTube channel.
Kudos to Mr. Kimmel, who pronounced
Laufey’s name flawlessly. VG
Trolls—the sad ones hiding behind
computer screens, not the cunning
cannibals of Icelandic lore—raised
the Eurovision hopes of Icelanders.
It seemed like the one and only Will
Ferrell asked on Twitter if he could
compete for Iceland in Eurovision in
2022, a competition that Icelanders
take unapologetically seriously.

Some Icelandic media fell for the
trolling tweet, reporting on it like it
had an actual basis in reality, only to
be shamed when it was pointed out
that it was the work of a rather well-
known troll, rather than Mr Ferrell. Hey,
Ferrell’s “Eurovision Song Contest: The
Story of Fire Saga”, is a cult hit over
here, the media were probably too
busy singing Ja Ja Ding Dong to do any
fact-checking…

If the offer had been real, Will Ferrel
would have been to Iceland what
Canadian superstar Celine Dion was for
Switzerland when she won Eurovision
for them in 1988. Not that we know
anything about Eurovision. VG
MUSIC
NEWS

Reykjavík Ramen Champion 2022
February 6th - 12:00 to 16:00 - Ramen
Momo - 3,900 ISK
Ramen! You love it! But could you
eat a whole kilo!ramme of it? Visit
Ramen Momo on the 6th of February
and order the ‘Giant Ramen’ to find
out. The fastest eater at the end of
the day will be crowned Reykjavík’s
Ramen Champion, and you’d better
believe that’s a title we want. JG

Valentine’s Day Quiz
February 14th - 17:00 to 18:00 - Árbær
Library - Free Admission
Lonely-hearted introverts! You
already love the library, you love
nerds, and we suspect you probably
secretly love love. So why not take
part in a romantic Valentine’s quiz
with total heartthrob quizmaster
Guttormur "orsteinsson? We predict
Cupid will be working his magic
amongst the bookshelves. JG
Los Bomboneros
February 19th - 20:00 - Skuggabaldur - Free Entry
As far as we’re
concerned, the only way
to survive these cold,
dark February days is
to bundle up, get to a
bar and bear witness to
some electrifying live
music. Los Bomboneros,
with their Central and
South American-inspired
songs (composed by
band member Daníel
Helgason), are the
perfect antidote to your
Boreal blues. The quartet
perform on trombone,
bass, violin, percussion,
vocals and tres Cubano
to bring a welcome
equatorial warmth to the
harsh Icelandic winter.
With an album expected
in the coming months,
this is the perfect
time to check out Los
Bomboneros and get
to know their sound, all
in the cosy confines of
Skuggabaldur. JG
Music and Events
An Icelandic Noise
Ka#ka Paluch weaves to!ether electronic dance
music, the sounds of the wild and the soft
strains of historic Icelandic folk
Words: John Pearson Video still: Magdalena !ukasiak
What does Iceland sound like?
Perhaps it’s an odd question to
ask about a big chunk of rock in
the North Atlantic. But if you’re in
tune with the sound of nature—or
the nature of sound—then perhaps
not.
Over the last two years, musi-
cian Ka#ka Paluch has created a
remarkable project addressing that
question from the perspective of
the island’s natural environments.
But when she first asked herself
the question five years ago, having
just moved to Reykjavík from her
Polish mountainside hometown
of Zakopane, she had the sound of
contemporary Icelandic music on
her mind.
“My friends had been joking
that I'd moved here to be closer to
Björk, because I was a crazy fan,”
Ka#ka laughs. “When you're living
in Poland and you're interested in
Icelandic music—Björk, Sigur Rós,
Gusgus—this is how Iceland sounds
to you. But when you move here
you realise that, musically, Iceland
does not sound like this. Quite the
opposite, actually. I haven't met an
Icelander who listens to Björk.”
Noise annoys
To uncover the sound of Iceland,
Ka#ka asked the sorts of people who
might be expected to know: musi-
cians, artists and filmmakers. And
their responses were surprising.
“The most common answer was
‘a noise’,” she says. “That’s what
Iceland sounds like to them—
constant noise.”
Much of that noise is the inces-
sant racket made by us humans,
but that said, nature is rarely quiet.
If the distinction between a sound
and a noise is that one is easy on
the ear and the other isn’t, then
Mama Nature can be one noisy
mutha. A howling wind can jar the
nerves. And even the steady roar
of a waterfall—surely one of the
earth’s most beautiful gifts—can
become an imposition through its
sheer persistence. Ka#ka realised
that perhaps her curiosity shouldn’t
be about the sound of Iceland, but
about the noise of Iceland.
While working as a tour guide,
she had a conversation with a
customer whose sight was compro-
mised, but who experienced nature
through what she heard rather than
saw. Ka#ka realised that the book
she was planning about the noise of
Iceland would actually work better
as a collection of audio recordings.
“I decided I was going to record all
the popular places in Iceland,” she
says. “No photos, just sounds. And
I assumed that I would be record-
ing them with people, buses and
everything. And then the pandemic
started.”
Mapping noise
When Ka#ka found herself unem-
ployed in the spring of 2020—and
a relative silence fell on Iceland’s
natural tourist spots—she set about
visiting each one to make field
recordings, which were eventually
compiled in an interactive map at
www.noisefromiceland.com. And
while each recording was already an
art piece in its own right, some also
seemed to volunteer themselves as
source material for musical expan-
sion. Thus the idea for the ‘Noise
From Iceland’ album was born, for
which Ka#ka leaned on her experi-
ence as a dance music producer.
The resulting album is an engag-
ing mélange of 14 tracks, half
of which are pure ambient field
recordings best experienced via a
decent pair of headphones. Hurri-
canes whip around the listener,
lava roars and bubbles in the ears,
and the sounds of a glacier lagoon
wash all around and over. Then, in
the other seven tracks, the sounds
of nature are bolstered by solid yet
spacious dance music, influenced
heavily by late-nineties progressive
house.
“I’m a huge fan of trance and
techno,” Ka#ka says. “Most of the
time that you hear music composed
to field recordings it’s ambient, or
some experimental electronica.
And honestly, I tried to do that but
I just needed a beat! It was interest-
ing to see the reactions of people
who were probably expecting music
that you could meditate to. And
I’m not saying that’s never going to
happen, but for this I really needed
that Paul van Dyk kind of sound.”
Archive noise
Ka#ka’s musical education in
Poland eventually led to degrees
in musicology and ethnomusicol-
ogy—the science of documenting
and analysing the music of the
folk. And it was that interest that
led to the latest development in the
Noise From Iceland project: to find
a way to incorporate the Icelandic
language.
The organisation Íslenskur
Músík Og Menningararfur, (Icelan-
dic Music and Cultural Heritage),
curates a collection of audio
recordings, photos, films and texts
representing a history of Icelan-
dic culture. And it was there that
Ka#ka found a recording from 1969,
in which a woman by the name of
Hildigunnur Valdimarsdóttir sings
a folk tale called “Tungli" Glotti
Gult Og Bleikt” (“The Moon Glows
Yellow And Pink”).
“There was such a nice energy
coming from this recording, and
I liked the lyrics,” says Ka#ka. “But
then I went deeper and found out
about their meaning.” The song
depicts a woman called Geirlaug,
sitting at night, sewing a sweater
in the moonlight. She waits for her
dead husband, Glúmur, to come and
take her away with him.
“Then I was like, ‘Yeah, that's
the one!’” Ka#ka says. “It feels nice,
we can dance to it, but it's a horror
story.” In Ka#ka’s version of “The
Moon Glows Yellow And Pink”,
Hildigunnur’s original a cappella
vocal is respectfully arranged
over a subtle but uplifting house
track. The whole concept is under-
pinned by a recording of an Icelan-
dic storm, made by Ka#ka the day
before she found the archived song.
Ka#ka plans to continue develop-
ing the Noise From Iceland project,
creating music connected directly
to the elements, to the land and to
the people living on this big chunk
of North Atlantic rock.
Disappointingly, equine heavy breathing does not feature on the album